Devil in the Downdraft

After a year away from the Army, ex-Royal Marine sniper turned Australian Army Padre, Rob Llewellyn, and his wife Anne begin a new chapter in Queensland. Anne, now Chief of Staff to a Combat Brigade, is quietly anxious—Rob's last deployment to Afghanistan left deep scars, and she fears his return to chaplaincy, this time with an Army Aviation Regiment, may reopen old wounds. But Anne has challenges of her own. A hostile work environment and ghosts from her past threaten her hard-won stability. Meanwhile, a local journalist begins targeting the military with biting exposes—undermining morale and casting doubt on the institution they've both given their lives to serve. As the pressure mounts, Rob and Anne find themselves reckoning not just with their roles, but with the hidden cost of their years in uniform—and the sobering truth that some of the deepest wounds aren't inflicted by war, but by the lives they've tried to build in its wake. The Devil in Downdraft is a gripping, quietly devastating novel of psychological pressure, institutional fragility, and hard-won love—marking a turning point in the Rob Llewellyn series as the couple begin to reckon with everything they've carried and everything they can no longer ignore.